


How We Are

by Marasa



Series: Dream Eater [5]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Break down, Clingy Josh, Comforting, Cuddling, Drug Use (Mentioned), Emotional, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Lashing Out, M/M, Panic Attack, Stress, Summoning, Supernatural Elements, Violence (mentioned), criminals, moody Josh, protective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:09:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12165879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Tyler’s summoning had been quick. He wasn't in Josh's life and then suddenly he was.(Or Josh has been really distant lately and Tyler reflects on how he entered Josh's life)





	How We Are

**Author's Note:**

> I got a request for Josh to have a panic attack and I've gotten a couple requests about how Tyler was summoned, so I combined them. So here you go. Hopefully it is satisfactory.

“What are you doing?”

This is the fifth time Tyler’s asked this week. He’s outside of Josh’s room, the door in front of him locked. It's not usually locked considering they do everything together and keep each other company all the time. They're best friends. They don't lock doors, but this past week Josh has been locking the door. 

Tyler looks around the empty hall to the other closed bedroom doors. It seems like everyone in the house had been locking their doors and preoccupying themselves with undisclosed work. It worries Tyler and when Tyler is worried, he spends time with Josh.

But Josh’s door is still closed and locked.

There's no response and Tyler is about to knock again but then the door is opening to reveal an annoyed looking Josh.

“Nothing, Tyler,” Josh says curtly. Tyler looks behind him into the room, ready to enter but Josh stands in his way. Tyler makes a small grunt of confusion.

“Tyler,” Josh says, “leave me alone.”

Tyler cocks his head. “You...don't want me here?”

Josh sighs. “I want you here, just not right now. I'm working on something. I need to be alone. To focus.”

“Focus,” Tyler repeats, mouth forming around the word as he tries to understand.

Tyler still doesn't understand but takes a step back from the door. Immediately Josh shuts it.

The house is quiet and Tyler remembers something about how Mark had said they were going to go to the store to replenish half the house’s dwindling supplies. He remembers how they were in a hurry, rushed. Michael had worn a scowl, the smile from Hayley’s face had been gone, even Mark had been completely quiet as they had left for ‘supplies,’ whatever that meant.

Tyler looks around at the dim emptiness of the hallways and sinks to the floor, sitting against the wall by Josh’s door. He plays with the loose thread hanging from his right sock, humming a little to himself. He doesn't know how long this is suppose to take. He tries not to worry himself. Tyler wonders what Josh is working on.

“How long have you been out here?” Josh asks when the door finally opens so much later.

“Um,” Tyler thinks aloud as he looks up at his friend, “since you told me to leave.”

Josh frowns.

“It's almost been two hours. You didn't have to wait out here in the hall, Tyler,” Josh says as he helps Tyler up. “You should've watched T.V. or something.” 

“But I don't like television.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Josh sighs, “come on. Let's eat something before the losers get home.”

|-/

“You really like that mask, huh?” Josh asks with a tired smile.

They're sitting at the breakfast table, Josh at the head of the table with his cheek resting in his palm and Tyler sits beside him, legs crossed under him as he swirls a spoon in the bowl of cereal in front of him, no intention of actually eating. Tyler shrugs behind the guard of his rabbit mask.

“You look tired, Josh.”

Josh is silent.

“What have you been doing?” Tyler says. “You don't look...good.” Behind his mask, Tyler looks down again at the spiral of milk created by the course of his spoon. 

Tyler knows Josh is hiding something and the worst part is that there's nothing he can do about it. Josh has no obligation to tell him every little thing he does. All Tyler knows is that whatever Josh has been doing leaves him with heavy bags under his eyes and an exhausted demeanor. 

In these past few days, the house had seemed to change.

It was quieter. Everyone seemed to be in their own heads. They were more annoyed and overall in a bad mood. 

Four days ago, Tyler had heard Josh yell for the first time. 

Mark shouldn't have erased his episodes of the X-Files from the DVR, but that was no excuse for Josh to yell in his face and call him a, ‘fucking dick.’ Once Josh stormed out of the room and back to his own bedroom, the rest of them in the living room had followed his example and left to their own rooms, leaving behind Tyler to watch a show he didn't know anything about by himself.

Quick to anger, exhausted, solitary- Josh is getting worse. Tyler hides his worry behind his mask, not wanting to add to the immense stress clearly on Josh already. 

The red-haired man reaches out a hand and hooks his finger under the edge of his mask and gently tugs on it. Tyler follows his silent request by taking off the mask and he can see Josh clearly again, can see just how tired he is. 

“Please don't worry,” Josh whispers, his finger still outstretched and resting on his the side of Tyler’s chin. It's the most contact they've had in a week, outside of Josh helping him up from the floor. Tyler blinks slowly, falling into the touch he didn't know he needed. “I’ll tell you what's going on when I figure it out myself, alright?”

“Promise?” Tyler whispers, eyes closed and head leaning subtly into Josh’s touch. 

“Promise.”

|-/

Something is happening.

Tyler is out of the loop. He's been out of the loop for a while. As he watches all the residents of the house sitting at the breakfast table whispering and pointing at a map on the table, Tyler realizes he's been out of the loop for as long as he's been here.

Tyler’s summoning had been quick. He wasn't in Josh's life and then suddenly he was.

He can't remember all that well but he can remember the circle drawn on the concrete floor of the basement and the strange face before him. 

“No fricking way"- That had been the first thing Tyler had heard as he apparated in the air, hovering above the ground before his whole body fell to cold floor. Tyler had whimpered, whined, searched for safety in the basement of a dimension he had never been to before.

He still remembers how when he had first made eye contact with that man that had summoned him, his whole soul was calm for a minute.

The figure that had summoned him came closer, shushing him but Tyler was scared and panicked at the new environment and he scrambled backwards and the man let him, still shushing him and cooing at him from afar as new, loud voices called down the stairs, saying things like, “what did you do?” “Shit like that exists?!” “I told you not to touch that book!” 

Weeks later, when Tyler is acclimated to his new environment and has embraced that safety found in the one named Josh, does Josh explain to him how their lives work here, how Tyler was summoned, how it's all connected.

Josh doesn't have a job. No one in the house has a job. They don't deliver pizzas, they don't do retail. They stay at home and take turns going away at night, only to return with bags of money and occasionally, blood on their boots.

Josh says they have unusual jobs. Tyler finds that by ‘unusual,’ Josh means illegal.

Josh says that one night, it was his turn to pack up a bag full of guns and weed and drive fifty minutes away to a house on the outskirts of some podunk town. Josh says that the man who answered the door didn't have enough money for his delivery and they acted accordingly.

Josh assures that they didn't kill him but made sure they got credit cards, a television, and a stereo system to make up for their wasted time.

Josh says that from the bookshelf, something called to him. He says it was like a magnetic pull, like he had to go over to it. So he swatted away crystals set up on the bookshelf, knocked over half-used candles and incense so he could take that one book that seemed to be calling to him

Josh says the book had all sorts of shit to summon in it, from hell beasts to demons to shapeshifting spirits. He says that he was agnostic about the whole thing, didn't really believe in it but wasn't sure enough to say it was fake.

Josh says he installed their new television when they came back home, hid the untraceable guns back in the wall of Michael’s room, them rolled up a few joints with the unsold weed before taking the book to the basement. There, he says he sat down on the floor, closed his eyes, flipped open the book, and read the name Dream Eater from the page and followed the instructions accordingly. 

It was fate, Josh says. That tug, that attraction to that book had been pulling at him and then he had opened the book to that page and the pull in his chest had eased. It felt right, Josh says. Tyler feels the same but doesn't say it.

“I didn't think it'd work,” Josh said as they laid in bed, looking at each other on a lazy Saturday morning after Josh’s explanation of how Tyler was summoned.

“Are you upset that it did?” Tyler whispered.

Josh had shifted closer to him, touched Tyler’s hand with his own but didn't lace their fingers, no matter how much both of them may have wanted to. “No,” Josh said. “No, I could never be. It would be impossible for me to feel upset about this. I’m so happy it worked. I'm so so happy you're in my life, Tyler.”

Josh would later say, with a shitty facade of strength and a slightly shaking voice, how Tyler was under no contract, that no official soul bond had been formed between them, meaning Tyler was free to leave whenever he wanted to. The spirit had smiled and said that if he wanted to leave, he would've done it already.

Josh and his friends don't have jobs but they still work. They work all the time. 

Michael and Josh leave with a suitcase full of weed at 11pm and return at 4am with a suitcase of cash instead.

Hayley, Jordan and Mark leave with a whole artillery stuffed in the duffle bags on their bags and return with gold jewelry, expensive watches and checks.

Sometimes Josh leaves with an aluminum baseball bat and returns the same way he left, except now with blood on his clothes and blood caked on the length of the metal in his hand.

It’s business, Josh says. Josh also says he never kills anyone; he isn't that cruel. They did what they had to do but in a twisted way, they seem to love their jobs. Tyler thinks it's the adrenaline, the quick cash, the togetherness. 

It doesn't look like any of that anymore.

The past week of dampened moods seems to have come to a head at midnight tonight as they all sit in the dim kitchen at the breakfast table, the only light on being the one hanging just above them.

At the head of the table, Michael looks conflicted. They all stare down at the map and argue quietly how certain plans of entry won't work. Hayley points to something on the paper and Jordan shakes his head, looking down at the table. Mark looks up, glances vaguely in Tyler’s direction and murmurs something. Everyone goes silent.

Tyler feels small as they all look at him. All of them but Josh. 

Tyler stands in the hallway, ignoring the many pairs of eyes on him to instead focus on Josh’s back, begging him to turn around, to just look at him and explain what's happening, let him help. Tyler just wants to see his friend’s face again when everything seems suddenly so different and scary. It reminds Tyler of how he felt when he was first summoned and Josh had been there. He needs Josh there again for him. 

It's weird, how Josh had talked about having a magnetic attraction to that book; Tyler has the same calling to Josh. Summoner and summoned- their bond will forever be intimate. They're more than friends, may be more than lovers. 

Soulmates sounds right in Tyler’s head.

Josh turns in his seat and makes eye contact with Tyler in the hallway. There's something pained and exhausted in his eyes. The safety that Tyler had originally seen in those eyes is hidden away as instead, Josh looks as though he can't find the safety in himself that he wants to offer Tyler; it simply isn't accessible in that moment, even though Josh looks desperate to find it.

Then Josh turns his back to Tyler and lays his head face down on the table in front of him. He looks as though he's just given up.

Tyler swallows the dreaded lump in his throat as he goes down the hall and back into Josh’s room. He closes the door behind him and lays down in Josh’s bed. He sinks in the silence and feels that tug in his chest that is always there when Josh is not with him.

Tyler hugs Josh’s pillow and tries not to get that defeated image of Josh out of his head.

|-/

“Josh, what's wrong?”

“Stop bugging me, Tyler.”

From the corner of the room, Tyler watches as Josh paces his bedroom, looking for something substantial to smoke but coming up short. 

It had only been a whole two hours after their shared look in the hallway. Josh had returned to his room but not without slamming the door closed and hissing curses to himself. Tyler had jumped up and got out of the way as Josh opened drawers, looked under pillows, threw books off the shelf, all the while spitting something about needing to find a joint, something, anything to calm himself down.

“Josh, you're worrying me,” Tyler says, hands turned to fists as Josh makes a mess of his bedside table. “Please tell me what's happening, Josh.” Tyler takes a step forward to the restless figure. “Stop this. Josh, stop.”

“Don't tell me to stop!” Josh yells as he turns to him. “I'm under a lot of fuckin’ stress, Tyler! It's my room, I'll tear it up if I fucking want to!”

Tyler jumps. He’s never heard Josh speak like this to him and he doesn't like it. Josh’s eyes go a little soft at the image of the spirit obviously scared. His jaw goes tight and Josh looks frustrated again, but this time, he's frustrated with himself.

“‘m sorry, Tyler, I'm sorry.” Josh runs his hands down his face. “I'm sorry for yelling. I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry.”

Baby? 

Tyler blinks at the name that makes his face flood with heat but he doesn't say anything about it. It seems that in Josh’s overwhelmed state, he hasn't even noticed that he has spoken the name to him.

Josh has never called him that before and it's so intimate that Tyler wants to come nearer, fall into Josh’s arms and cry all his insecurities out into the chest of the man who is his best friend, his life, something more. Tyler needs Josh. Tyler needs to hold on tight to Josh and tell him, please, please let me share in your pain, let me help you, talk to me, I don't ever want you to be hurting like this.

“I’m sorry,” Josh repeats. “I’m freaking out, dude. I'm fucking…falling apart.” Josh doesn't take his face from his hands. He acts like they're the only safe place that exists. 

Tyler takes a cautious step forward. Josh’s revelation hurts him immensely. He didn't know Josh was feeling this way and he hates that he's suffering. Forget the supposed joint hiding somewhere in this room- Tyler wants to calm Josh down himself.

“T-Tell me what's going on,” Tyler whispers as he approaches Josh. The punk emerges from his hands so Tyler can see the way his chin trembles as he shakes his head vehemently from side to side. “Joshua, you promised. Tell me. You promised.”

Josh sucks in a broken breath and looks at Tyler with shiny eyes.

“We have a job,” Josh says. “A big one, bigger than we’ve ever done before, almost too big. It's too much for us. It's so big, it's scary. If we fuck it up…” Josh’s eyes well up, his breathing is pained and broken. Josh shakes his head again.

“I didn't tell you because I didn't want to worry you. I wanna protect you,” Josh says, sounding as though he's about to cry, “but if we fuck this job up, I don't know if I can. I don't wanna go to prison. I can't do that to you- I can't abandon you like that.” Josh looks up. “I don't wanna die on this job, Tyler. I don't wanna die.”

All the power leaves Josh as he suddenly falls on the foot of the bed. His head is down as he looks at his lap. His breath is erratic, so erratic that it seems incredibly painful and unsatisfactory. Tyler had no idea this was going on. 

The spirit stares, shocked, pained, so worried as the man that has been his stability since his summoning finally cracks.

Seeing Josh grab and his chest, wet eyes wide and breathing so labored, Tyler sees how weak Josh really is. It scares him.

“J-Josh, Josh, no, it's okay, breathe,” Tyler says as he comes to stand in front of him. His hands hover above him but he doesn't know if he should touch Josh at the moment. He doesn't know what to do at all.

Josh gasps for breath. He isn't getting enough air. He's shaking and a few tears escape his eyes and then Josh’s clawing at his chest, his throat, until there are light scratches along his skin. 

“No, no, no! You need to calm down, Josh,” Tyler pleads. “Breathe! Joshua, calm down!”

Tyler fists his hair in panic, unsure of what to do as Josh legitimately breaks down and struggles to breathe.

Josh had been there for Tyler when he woke from nightmares, when he cried, when he was so scared. Josh had been there when Tyler experienced the fear that came with existing in this dimension for the first time. Josh made things better and now Tyler was struggling to do the same. It terrifies him that he might not be able to comfort Josh and alleviate his pain.

So Tyler acts on instinct.

Without thinking, the spirit throws his arms around Josh’s shoulders. He squeezes tightly, maneuvers himself so Josh’s face is against his chest and buries his face in Josh’s dyed red hair. 

“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay,” Tyler chants with tears brimming in his own eyes. Josh gasps against him, each one sounding more wet than the last. 

“Josh, please don't be afraid, there's no reason to be afraid right now, we’re here, together,” Tyler soothes. “Nothing is going to happen, you're okay, shh, shh. I'm right here, you're safe, I have you, Joshua, you're safe.”

Tyler wants to protect him. He wants to keep Josh here, safe with him, somewhere away from the police or any other criminal gang, away from death. Josh’s hands come up and cling to Tyler’s sides. Tyler’s hand comes up to rest on the back of Josh’s head and hold him steady against his chest.

Tyler feels protective at this moment. Tears well in his eyes because he can't protect Josh.

Whatever Tyler can do, he does. That's why he ushers Josh to lay down on the bed without removing Josh’s head from his chest. 

Tyler holds him as Josh cries and closes his eyes, focusing all his power on the darkness that is behind his eyelids. 

Then everything is silent and black. It's like floating deep underwater where no light can reach them, it's weightless and silent and so soothing.

When Tyler opens his eyes, they’re in a forest. 

The air smells of pine, faintly of rain. There is a cool breeze that feels like autumn. The sun is hidden behind dark, gray clouds but it's not frightening; it's comforting.

Tyler realizes Josh’s bed is gone from under him in favor of the soft forest floor. Josh is still plastered to his front but his grip on his sides is softer, not nearly as needy, and his breath is coming easier.

Josh looks up, blinks a few tears from his drying eyes, and shares a look with the spirit that communicates their shared shock that Tyler managed to create a dream in Josh’s head. 

They have so many questions, like how did he do it? Could he do it again? Will they ever be able to recreate this environment of pure serenity? But they can ask questions later. Right now, they just need to exist in the present.

They look to the canopy of leaves above them, at the world that Tyler has created out of mere desperation. The wind that combs through the branches and rustles the leaves on them originates from Tyler’s will to comfort Josh and it's working. 

This is a place they share that does not allow fear. It is just them, quiet, cool, soothing. The forest floor is comfortable and Josh shifts in Tyler’s grip to simply press his cheek to Tyler’s chest and wrap his arms around his waist. He clings; he just needs Tyler closer right now.

Tyler knows he has no control of what happens when Josh and the rest of his friends attempt this job in a few days, but all that matters is the present moment shared between them.

Together, they look at the ceiling of leaves and the patches of gray sky that peaks through them. 

It’s safe, it's enough, if just for tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Tyler's dream place- I got so chill when I wrote that scene. So relaxing


End file.
